Read Online Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher - Free Book Online

room at Dale Thornton, who, unlike Sarah Byrnes, had not refused my offer of Oreos and was, in fact, finishing up the package. Feeling invaded, I wondered if General Eisenhower let the Russians come to his house when he invited them to be on his side in World War II. If he did, I’ll bet Mamie—that was Ike’s wife—didn’t use the good silverware.
    â€œSo this is where you freakos hang out,” Dale said through a mouth full of dark brown crumbs and frosting. He was sunk into a bean-bag chair, scanning the room, gripping the sack of cookies as if it were a flotation device on the Titanic and the captain had just yelled, “Save the women and children first!” A home-crafted tattoo sporting BORN TO RASE HELL on a banner across a very poor excuse for a Harley-Davidsoninsignia graced his right forearm. He wore blue jeans, more hole than jean, and a black Twisted Sister T-shirt—the complementary pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve—which also showed serious signs of aging. His curly brown hair clung matted to his forehead, and my olfactory senses said without question it was closing in on the time of month when the Thorntons should consider emptying the moonshine out of the bathtub.
    Sarah Byrnes followed Dale’s suspicious eyes around our attic hideaway. “Pretty nice, huh?” she said.
    â€œBeen in nicer.”
    â€œMaybe till you heard the sirens coming,” Sarah Byrnes said, and I closed my eyes and held my breath. “I been by your place, Dale Thornton. You got a bunch of old wrecked cars in your yard, and I’d live in any one of them before I’d live in that house. And there’s gotta be a skinny old dog factory out back somewhere. I don’t care if you wanna live like a pig, nobody can help what their family’s like, but don’t you go saying, ‘Been in nicer’ like you live in some castle.”
    â€œYou guys invite me down here to polish off these cookies, or you got something you wanna talk about?”
    I looked to Sarah Byrnes. This was her idea.
    She said, “What happened when you got home the other night after school? Old Man Mautz call your dadand tell him about the chewing tobacco?”
    â€œNone a your damn business,” Dale snapped. “He didn’t do nothin’.”
    â€œThat right?” Sarah Byrnes challenged. “That why you didn’t show up to school for three days and why you wore that stupid-lookin’ turtleneck sweater for three days?”
    â€œMy brother gimme that sweater, Scarface!”
    â€œDoesn’t mean you have to wear it.”
    Just offer him a deal, I pleaded in my head, unable for the life of me to understand why Sarah Byrnes wanted to stir him up. Someone could get hurt, and I was farthest from the door.
    â€œSo what did your daddy do? Really.”
    â€œSame thing your daddy woulda done.” He nodded toward me. “Or Fat Boy’s. He kicked my ass. Whaddaya care?”
    â€œJust wondered.”
    I started to tell Dale I didn’t have a dad and my mom has never raised a hand in violence toward me, if you don’t count when I was three and peed down the heat register during a week-long seige of below-zero weather, but I thought better. If Dale Thornton has a need to believe I get a regular ass-kicking, think away, Dale Thornton. I have recuperative work to do before Imess with you again.
    â€œSo I got places to go,” Dale said. “I don’t got all day to sit around and talk to a couple of freakos. What do you guys want? Got anything else to eat?”
    Out of self-preservation, I went behind the dusty overstuffed couch at the far end of the attic, returning with a giant bag of corn chips. “Yeah!” Dale said, tearing them out of my hand before I could sit down, scattering perfectly good and unbroken chips across the hardwood floor. “Damn. They make these bags so you can’t hardly get ’em